Business tycoon Tony Elumelu revealed that former President Muhammadu Buhari and the late Chief of Staff Abba Kyari turned down his company’s proposal to purchase an oilfield, despite having secured billions of dollars to finance the deal.
Tony Elumelu disclosed that in 2017, his investment company, Heirs Holdings, made a $2.5 billion offer to the Buhari administration to acquire an oilfield.
However, the former president and his Chief of Staff, Abba Kyari, rejected the proposal, stating that an oilfield of such “strategic importance” could not be entrusted to a private operator.
Elumelu shared this in an interview with the Financial Times released on Friday.
Speaking with the Financial Times, Mr Elumelu said the rejection “defied logic” given that “he would have been purchasing it from a foreign company.”
Mr Elumelu, who chairs the UBA, said he soon discovered the bane of the petroleum industry, oil theft, which was a major factor influencing international oil companies’ divestment from onshore assets.
Having acquired a 45 per cent stake in an oilfield about three years ago, Mr Elumelu said he was impacted by the activities of criminal gangs who constantly robbed his pipeline and stole enough crude that caused his company to shut down.
With a 45 per cent stake acquired in an oilfield about three years ago, Mr Elumelu voiced his frustration after oil thieves robbed his pipeline and stole enough crude that caused his company to shut down production.
The frustration prompted him to tweet in 2022, “How can we be losing over 95 per cent of oil production to thieves?”
Mr Elumelu said, “The government should know, they should tell us” the masterminds behind the oil theft. “Our security agencies should tell us who is stealing our oil. You bring vessels to our territorial waters, and we don’t know?”
Mr Buhari’s spokesperson, Garba Shehu, did not immediately respond to Peoples Gazette’s request for comments on Mr Elumelu’s claim, as SMS and WhatsApp messages sent to him were unanswered.
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